


chasing cars

by flwrpotts



Category: Archie Comics & Related Fandoms, Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst!, F/M, Post 2x21, in which I take canon out back and slice off its serpent tattoo, more angst!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-12
Updated: 2018-05-12
Packaged: 2019-05-05 19:36:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14625594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flwrpotts/pseuds/flwrpotts
Summary: It’s the sort of moment that cracks the planet of her in half, sends her completely out of orbit, into the lightless region of space where life is not possible. There aren’t enough pages in the world to describe the naked horror that sinks its teeth into Betty, spluttering and terrible. It is the sort of minute that splits her entire life into before and after.OR.jughead dies.





	chasing cars

**Author's Note:**

> so like, im sorry. recommended listening: "chasing cars" by snow patrol, "I have never loved someone" by my brightest diamond, and "landslide" by fleetwood mac.

_let’s waste time/_

_chasing cars/_

_around our heads/_

 

x. 

It’s the sort of moment that cracks the planet of her in half, sends her completely out of orbit, into the lightless region of space where life is not possible. There aren’t enough pages in the world to describe the naked horror that sinks its teeth into Betty, spluttering and terrible. It is the sort of minute that splits her entire life into _before_ and _after._

F.P is holding his limp body, and Jughead is dead. He’s dead. She is watching, and his chest is not moving, and the curve of his throat is lifeless, and he is dead.

This winding, rotted to the core town killed him and the secrets they didn’t know how not to keep killed him and Betty killed him too, didn’t she? All those months ago, when he had spun out his escape fantasy, the shimmering fantasy of the open road.

She should have gone, Betty now realizes. She should have said _yes, let’s leave, let’s run away,_ only instead she just took a sip of milkshake and now the only person who has ever really understood her is _dead._ Oh, god.

It seems impossible that time should keep stubbornly spinning out, second after second, that things should keep existing when the entire world has just ended. She cannot believe that there are people in the world who don’t know, people who are going about their day to day lives when the fucking sky should be falling in, Riverdale should be burning to the ground.

Something in her chest rips, and then there are tears on her face. Betty is distantly aware that Archie and Sweet Pea are trying to muscle her away from the scene, keep her from looking, but the premature grief has closed around her throat, and Betty Cooper is no longer a girl who cares about things like propriety. She fights against them, hysterical with hair in her face and metallic blood in her mouth from where she bit down on her tongue. The sound she makes isn’t human, more like the high, keening wail of an animal.

She manages to break away from them, the two boys still shell shocked themselves, and she stumbles to F.P, who is laying Jughead out in the grass.

“Fuck, _fuck,”_ she says, ineloquent and sobbing, sinking down to crouch beside him, to run a hand through his tacky, blood matted hair.

He looks like something from the stained glass windows at the church she attended as a child, like one of those bloody, Biblical stories that they were never taught in First Communion for fear of being too gruesome. He looks like something old and primal, something out of a story about justice and evil. Jughead’s always been a martyr.

F.P claps a hand on her back, intended to be comforting, and Betty flinches hard, curling further into Jughead’s lifeless body. She presses her face into the side of his neck, and the smell of his skin lingers, under all the sweat and blood, that familiar Jughead scent of cheap boy shampoo and flannel. Her fingers knot tightly in the collar of his shirt, and then she feels it, the faintest fluttering against her knuckles.

Hope is a dangerous, neon lit thing in her chest, and then Betty’s first aid training is kicking in, she is digging her fingers in looking for a pulse, she is whispering _please don’t be dead please don’t jug pleasepleaseplease._

Her fingers are blood slicked and shaking, and she is fully aware that she is acting hysterical, but she’s sure that she felt it, sure that that was his heartbeat under her fingertips, however faint. She will yank him back into life with the force of her will, she will pull him straight up out of the grave and into her arms because it is _impossible_ that he is gone, that death can be stronger than the love shredding her chest wide open.

He wouldn’t just _leave her._ Jughead wouldn’t just- wouldn’t just _die._ Not before they were able to fix Riverdale, not before the story was over, not before they’d gotten their happy ending.

Her fingers continue to fumble at the crook of his neck, flailing and pressing hard into his carotid artery, waiting for the steady pressure of a heartbeat. A hand touches her shoulder, gentle.

“Betty,” Cheryl says, softer than she’s ever spoken to her. “Betty, there’s no pulse.”

“Yes, there is,” she insists, voice ragged from the saltwater clogging her throat. “I felt it. There was a pulse. He isn’t dead.”

Her fingers keep prodding at the fragile skin of his throat, all desperation, willing to do anything, anything, for that faint fluttering she felt to come back. “God fucking _damn it,”_ she hisses through tears, movements becoming more frantic.

A hand closes over her gently, pulling her away. Toni. Her face is contorted with grief, mascara streaked down her face, but her voice is firm when she speaks, no coddling. “Betty. There isn’t a pulse. It’s over.”

“Oh, God,” Betty whispers. “Oh, Juggie. Juggie, I’m sorry.”

 

x.

Chewing on a pen. Tying his shoelaces. Pulling on his beanie. Sitting with his feet kicked up on the desk of the Blue and Gold. Ordering Pop’s. Writing notes to himself. Kissing her palms. Pulling on a jacket. Standing with his arms folded. Taunting Reggie. Spilling a milkshake. Smiling at her. Drinking black coffee. Reading true crime novels. Listening to Pink Floyd records. Washing dishes in the trailer. Giving Toni a piggyback ride. Knocking knuckles with Archie. Rolling his eyes. Asking too many questions. Wearing layers of flannel. Riding the motorcycle. Making popcorn for the movie. Hauling her up onto the kitchen counter. Climbing up the ladder to her room. Laughing at a dumb joke. Playing video games. Eating the fourth slice of pizza. Kissing her with his eyes shut. Breaking into the _Sisters of Quiet Mercy._ Wearing the Pop’s uniform. Sitting on the couch. Saying _I love you, Betty Cooper._

All of it, gone.

 x.

She doesn’t cry, at the funeral.

The day is beautiful, the first true day of spring, and attendance for the service is low. Funerals are a dime a dozen in Riverdale these days, and most people skip the Mass in favor of enjoying the sunshine for the first time in what feels like years. Outside the window, Betty can see a fleet of kayakers out on Sweetwater River.

Betty puts on the same dress she wore to Jason Blossom’s funeral, and it’s amazing how little things change, even when the world has been ripped clean apart. She cannot help but remember the last time she wore it, standing with Jughead in her childhood bedroom, him in his oversized suit and clashing beanie, the way he had smiled at her, so tender she couldn’t breathe.  

But despite the church that doesn’t even fill up to the back row, everyone important is there. Toni and Cheryl and Sweet Pea and Fangs and Archie and Veronica and F.P, always F.P. The people who really cared, the ones who knew Jughead beyond the emo loner or the Serpent royalty.

She thinks he would have liked it better this way. Jughead could never stand the posturing, the crowds of false mourners at Jason’s funeral, play acting at grief. He would hate a big funeral, an event with the entire school and a framed portrait of him at the front. But Gladys doesn’t come, and Betty will never forgive her for it as long as she lives.

The entire thing is stiff, awkward. F.P goes first, and everyone holds their breath, watching him stumble to the front of the room, all whiskey breath and barely held together sadness.

“Jughead was,” F.P begins, eyes red rimmed. “He was-”

His voice breaks, and the tension in the room is something awful, like watching a car crash. F.P struggles to speak, but the words choke, and then it is just a man falling apart on a stage, his child lying in a coffin three feet away.

Surprisingly, or not, it’s Alice that stands. Eyeglasses on and voice flat to avoid betraying a tremor, she reads the speech he’s prepared: a simple, ineloquent thing about his son, his _brilliant boy._ When she finishes, she presses a hand to her mouth, and the tears that run down her face are silent.

After that, everyone is speaking, laughing through their tears, reminiscing about Jughead Jones, about his moods and his beanie and the goodness that ran straight to the marrow, to the bone.

Betty doesn’t contribute much, a few stories about his beanie and his unironic love of Tarantino movies, about the time he tried to check out sixteen books from the library when they were kids.

But most things are too true, too sacred to be spoken aloud, shared with other people. She keeps the real memories for herself. When he kissed her for the very first time, mouth tentative against hers and so much happiness it streamed like sunlight out her molars. After the fight at his surprise party, when she showed him the ugliness she was capable of and he pressed his lips to the jagged cuts on her palms. The first time he told her he loved her.  

No one will ever know of that night on the couch, when she had peeled off her pale pink dress and told him she wanted all of him. Or about the way they had slow danced in the diner at Pop’s at one forty five in the morning on a Tuesday, because Etta James was on the jukebox and they were in love.

She doesn’t really give a eulogy at all, just a couple scrappy, strung-together sentences.

“I once gave a speech, where I said that Jughead was the soul of Riverdale,” she says when it’s her turn. “He wasn’t. Nobody can be the soul of something else. But he was the best of us, and now he’s- he’s gone. He’s just gone.”

She doesn’t know why she even bothered with it. She could seize every dictionary in the English language and still wouldn’t have the words, the ability to capture the absolute loss of him, the worlds that have burned down inside her.

She makes it through the entire funeral, the entire _week,_ without crying, without truly falling apart. She takes the flowers and the casseroles and the pitying glances and uncomfortable hugs without flinching, a model Cooper; the Teflon, appropriate person she was raised to be.

It’s the ultimate defense mechanism, slipping into the shiny veneer of _Elizabeth Cooper_ , even when she doesn’t know it means anymore. Her hair remains in its ponytail and her cardigans are pastel and no one can see the the way her bones ache with exhaustion when she has to get out of bed.

She sits through the service, and she says her piece, and she hugs the people she needs to hug, and then she walks out of the tiny, shitty Church with her palms smarting, the pain less than what it should be. If she were to touch a wall, a perfect red handprint would come back. It feels like his blood on her hands.

 _Are you alright, Betty,_ Veronica had asked her, the morning after when she was still in the hospital for dehydration and nervous exhaustion. _Yes,_ she had replied. _Are you alright_ Archie had asked as she helped F.P write the guest list and pick out wood for the coffin. _Yes_ she answered. _Are you alright,_ her mother had questioned, zipping up her black funeral dress, and Betty said _Yes, I am._

She is not alright. She is a mess.

She is staring at the kitchen table, in this house that had never even held a real family, and she cannot stop thinking that he will never again sit at the table eating breakfast. He will never again smile or tell a joke or kiss her on the mouth.

She throws the lasagna that’s sitting on the counter, hard enough that the pan shatters, leaving jagged shards of glass across the floor. She cannot stop looking at the chair he once sat in, back when they still worried about things like where Polly was, and then she is shaking and then she is crying and then she is screaming and crying and shaking, entirely undone.

Alice walks in when she’s still throwing things- staplers and glasses and cake stands, anything fragile, anything big enough to do some damage in the wall. She wants to unmake the world the way she has been unmade.

Her mother grabs her as she sinks into the floor, and her ankle is sliced open on glass, but she doesn’t care, the pain in steadying.

“Mom,” she sobs. “Mom, he’s not coming back. I don’t know what to do. He _isn’t coming back.”_

“I know, baby,” Alice replies, rocking her back and forth like she is six instead of sixteen. “I know he isn’t. I’m so sorry.”

 

x. 

She dreams about him.

Never about anything special, never memories. Nothing about that night, the one with the blood and the wet grass and the gouges in her hands so deep she’d had to get three of them stitched up the next day.

She dreams of them doing common, everyday things. Sometimes they’re mini golfing. Other times they’re sitting at her kitchen table, licking envelopes. Or sitting on the couch, watching reruns of _I Love Lucy._ Walking Vegas, doing homework in the _Blue and Gold_ office, playing Scrabble. She has one dream four nights in a row that they’re sitting in Mrs. Higgins homeroom, listening to the morning announcements.

He never speaks to her, in the dreams, and Betty wakes up choking on her tears every time, gasping for air like she’s been sprinting for her life. After, she lies awake until morning, watching as dawn slides across the wall of Thornill’s dark, still guest room.

Sometimes, she wishes she’d just dream about the night he died instead. It might hurt less.

 

x. 

She packs up her things into cardboard boxes on a Saturday morning and moves out of her childhood home. She can’t stand to be there anymore, that glass house where they never did anything but hurt one another. Alice cries when she leaves, but Betty is too tired to feel anything like guilt. She’s spent so long burning up pieces of herself to keep her mother warm, it’s almost a relief to have nothing left to give.

She goes to Thornhill, fleeing into the dark embrace of the Blossoms like her sister before her. Cheryl is lonely and welcomes her with open arms, refers to her as _Cousin Betty_ and dotes on Nana Rose. Veronica is there, too, officially cutting ties with her family, and so is Toni, who never really had a family to begin with.

It’s like a strange, backwards summer camp. Betty dyes her hair one night, ruining the porcelain bathtub with boxed brown hair dye from the drugstore. She doesn’t recognize herself after, starts when she catches her reflection, and it’s something of a relief. She stops going by Cooper too, and takes on her mother’s maiden name instead.

But for all she tries to erase the person she was, she clings onto Jughead. There’s something awful in the way that people refuse to bring him up around her, as if it’s going to bring up the memories when she never stops forgetting.

She tries to stop time, that way. They eat breakfast Betty talks about his collection of WW2 documentaries. Archie brings over Pop’s and she recites his signature order. Toni pulls out her Serpent jacket and she talks about Jughead’s, about the way it felt against her sweater when he lent it to her.

“Nobody cares about your dead boyfriend,” Cheryl snaps once, when the anniversary of Jason’s death is coming up and everyone is on edge.

“I do,” Betty replies evenly.

But she feels everyone else start to forget. It feels impossible, that they should forget him, forget about _Jughead,_ about the quirks of his mannerisms and his deep down beliefs and his boundless, unfathomable kindness.

He was the only one in Riverdale who ever really understood her. The only one able to see past the ponytail, the only one who got it was like to feel like an outsider, even when you were inside the room.

They were meant for one another, Betty knows. He was the boy she was going to marry and have an apartment with and maybe adopt a cat or have some kids or go on adventures and solve mysteries, whatever. All their possible, bursting futures died with him, every opportunity to leave Riverdale and start somewhere fresh.

She’s digging through the cabinets, looking for toothpaste, when she sees the pill bottle. Leftover medicine from the time Jason broke his leg in ninth grade. Betty eyes up the pills for a few seconds, considering.

 _Might as well complete the Romeo and Juliet parallel_ she thinks, mentally tallying how many pills she’d need to knock her out and never wake up.

But then she starts, sees herself in the mirror. Blonde hair is coming in at the dark roots. She closes the bathroom cabinet and heads downstairs.

 

x. 

There are no happy endings, here.

  


**Author's Note:**

> come hang out on tumblr @flwrpotts!


End file.
